Female Education Has Completely Changed Marriage In America

The days when women got married and stayed married for financial security are coming to an end.

In a working NBER paper, Women's Emancipation Through Education, Fatih Guvenen and Michelle Rendall look at how women's advancement has dramatically affected marriage and divorce rates.

Women are more educated than ever before, earning more college degrees than men annually. They're also slowly closing the wage gap in America. With more earning power, education and stability, women are now waiting later to get married, and they're more likely to get out of a bad marriage.

These trends create an even higher demand for education among women — since education is insurance against divorce risk. According to the researchers:

"As women further their education, the earnings gap between spouses shrinks, leading to more unstable marriages and, in turn, further increasing demand for education."

And since the marriage market is filled with more educated women, it's more difficult for uneducated women to find a mate, making the marriage market even more competitive.

This chart shows how marriage rates have steadily declined since the 1950s, as the number of single Americans have increased. However, the divorce rate has gradually fallen since the 1980s: